Slashdot Mirror
Soldiers Can't Blog Without Approval
denebian devil writes "Wired.com has obtained a copy of updated US Army rules (pdf) that force soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages without first clearing the content with a superior officer. Previous editions of the rules asked Army personnel to "consult with their immediate supervisor" before posting a document "that might contain sensitive and/or critical information in a public forum." The new version, in contrast, requires "an OPSEC review prior to publishing" anything — from "web log (blog) postings" to comments on internet message boards, from resumes to letters home. Under the strictest reading of the rule, a soldier must check with his or her superior officer before every blog entry posted and every email sent, though the method of enforcing these regulations is subject to choices made by the unit commanders. According to Wired, active-duty troops aren't the only ones affected by the new guidelines. Civilians working for the military, Army contractors — even soldiers' families — are all subject to the directive as well, though many of the people affected by these new regulations can't even access them because they are being kept on the military's restricted Army Knowledge Online intranet. Wired also interviewed Major Ray Ceralde, author of the new regulations, about why this change has been made."
"Soldier's Can't Blog Without Approval" was not the title I gave it. Perhaps CmdrTaco has just had a long day.
To Whom it May Concern:
Today we are going to be traveling along road X and going to destination Y around noon. Boy, it is going to be hot. While there, we are going to be picking up an informant. He would be in big trouble if he is found out.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
First off, I'm not in the Army. I am, however, in the Navy and there have always been regulations about what can and cannot be shared with the public. OPSEC (Operational Security) is something every active duty military member is familiar with. There are filters in military email servers to flag emails that may violate OPSEC, but nothing like what the article describes. As a microISV and a Sailor, I wouldn't dream of putting everything I post through any military channel. Bottom line: this is an unpractical regulation and it won't last long.
for the military.
The original poster acts as though this is some new super-secret nefarious plot to keep secrets from the American public. The simple truth is that there has always been censorship of personal correspondence from war zones. This was true of WW2, Korea and, for all I know, of the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. Nobody likes it, least of all the poor junior officers who have to censor letter after letter, but it's a basic military necessity.
It's the military, not the cub scouts. Get over it.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
Consider the average soldier. Don't get me wrong, I've served my time too, but let's be honest here, there are more than a few that don't think past the next meal. Can you see a blog entry like "bleagh, again another boring patrol down road $somewhere at 1130 tonight, can't they come up with something new"?
Loose lips and all that.
Of course this will be used to keep them from telling any news of events that don't run so lovely to keep the spirit on the "home front" up. I doubt, though, that this is the main concern. Those news get out, this way or another, because some of those soldiers will and do come home, and there ain't much that could keep them from talking.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Despite the absolutist language, the guidelines' author, Major Ray Ceralde, said there is some leeway in enforcement of the rules. "It is not practical to check all communication, especially private communication," he noted in an e-mail. "Some units may require that soldiers register their blog with the unit for identification purposes with occasional spot checks after an initial review. Other units may require a review before every posting."
... the service is really a mess these days. When I was in (1989-1997, including service in Desert Storm) it was generally understood that one of the great strengths of the American military, as opposed to most other countries' militaries, was our the general American-ness of the way we talked with each other and with the civilian world. Soldiers (in the generic sense: soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines) were expected to bitch, quite loudly and often in public, when something wasn't working right. Because that's how things got fixed. Yeah, we were supposed to work through the chain of command, if possible, but everyone including the chain of command knew that wasn't always going to work. And this understanding, and the bitching that it allowed, was what led to constant improvement in tactics, weapons, logistics, and everything else that keeps an army fighting.
In other words, if we like you, say anything you want. If you don't, we're going to dig through every single thing you do when your hands touch a keyboard and find something to hang you with.
This is going to sound like standard old-soldeir grumbling, but
Now it seems like things are going more toward a Soviet model. Absolute obedience, top-down flow of information, shut up and do what you're told every single time; running the entire military like basic training. Well, guess what? Saddam Hussein's vaunted "fourth largest army in the world" was trained and equipped on Soviet lines, and we went through it like a hot knife through butter. Analysis after the end of the Cold War strongly suggests that if the balloon had ever gone up, the same thing would have happened on a grand scale in Europe. Authoritarian armies can win wars (Nazi Germany was just as authoritarian as the USSR, of course, but the German army was surprisingly flexible) but the cost is terrible -- as some German general is supposed to have remarked after the war, "We killed four of theirs for every one of ours they killed, but there was always a fifth Russian." Yeah, you can win wars like that, but (unless you're as bug-fuck insane as Stalin) you don't want to.
Also? Shit like Abu Ghraib flourishes in an atmosphere of secrecy. Now, I'm not going to claim with 100% certainty that there was no abuse of prisoners in Desert Storm; there probably was. I can say that, if it had been widespread and systematized as it clearly is in Iraq, as a medic I would probably have known it was going on. And I never saw anything like that. We took better care of Iraqi prisoners than their own army did, which is one reason so many of them were so quick to surrender. Keeping things open is the best way to ensure that everybody plays by the rules, and that in turn can reduce bitterness after the fighting is over and keep us from having to fight more wars in the future.
I look at those kids over there now, kids like I once was, and it seems to me they have more to fear from their own chain of command than they do from the enemy. That's fucked up.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.